Profile

[Eden Lights]

It would be nice if all members would be required to fill out the profile information.

Thanks

[landscape liter]

What motivates you to make such a request since you only filled out the location and interests parts of your profile? All I know about you is that you live in Tenn. and like the outdoors. What do you want to do with this information? I just assume remain annonymous. This board sometimes goes months without a post. Require a profile and it will only get worse.

[Eden Lights]

Nothing motivates me to request that information other than the unknown of a annonymous post author. Please don't take offense to my post.

[landscape liter]

No offense taken.

[sitelights]

I've been thinking of asking the site administrator to add a column on the members list that would show the geographical location of individual members if they have included that information in their profile. Guests and members who are seeking a lighting professional could then read the posts by that member listed in their geographic area and contact the poster on the basis of expertise as shown in the posts. [This comment was the genesis of the "locator" function that is now a prominent (if underused by members) feature of the site.]

I get inquiries to sitelights.com from all over the US (and abroad) asking me for referals. Since I know only a handful of other designer/installers in widely scattered areas whose work I have seen, I usually just refer them to (A) the Yellow Pages or (B) tell them to call a local lighting distributor and ask for the name of the company that buys the most low voltage equipment. I average 100 visitors a day at sitelights.com and 5 or 6 inquiring emails a week from people seeking a nearby professional.

If it is of any interest the lowvolt.org "hits" can be viewed by adding /reports to the end of the URL. Likewise the hit report for sitelights.com: add /hits.html to the URL.
The most accurate count of individuals visiting the sites is number 17 of the General Summary.

My research shows that the Forum is the most active, independent and popular venue on the web in this specialist area and it has been up less than a year. "Nightscaping's (r)" forum is dominated by their own technical staff and Northern Lights is the site that goes months without a new post. If there are any other sites like lowvolt.org please let me know.

[landscape liter]

Site lights, on average how many inquiries that turn into jobs per month/year do you cultivate from the sitelights.com website?

[landscape liter]

Even more disturbing than having members not post a profile is the lack of participation on the part of the listed members.
According to the site there are 45 members.
15 of which have never posted
5 with only 1 post
4 with 5 posts or less.
Either these people have nothing worthwhile to say or they are holding out for whatever reason.

[sitelights]

That 1/3 of the members have not posted seems OK to me. Some may have joined simply to give other members access to their home page (at least 3); others may have registered because they mistakenly thought it was a requirement to access the posts. I'm sure there are many reasons, all of them benign. I am reminded of the advice given to medical students learning the art of diagnosis: "Look for horses not zebras."

I'd like to know what you (and others) think of the idea of a geographic locator being added to the members list as outlined in my previous post. [This feature was added to the site; see the top center of any page.]

Your question about web site performance in a previous post will be answered below. Note that this response is is in the plural since it concerns the company not me as an individual.

The performance of the sitelights.com site in terms of acquiring new projects has been beyond our expectations: 1998 (2), 1999 (5), 2000 (8), 2001 (6...we had a very poor fourth quarter), 2002 (4 to date). We expect to acquire up to half of our new business via the web in the coming years. To anyone who carefully reads the site in its entirety it is clear that this is not a "selling" site; that distinguishes the site from all the others on the topic of low voltage outdoor lighting. If there is anything to be learned from this it is that people go to the web for information and if there is good information it inspires confidence.